The Asian Games wrapped up yesterday with China dominating the gold-medal count and North Korea stealing the limelight.
As the final events played out ahead of the closing ceremony, China had won 151 gold medals — well ahead of the 79 won by host South Korea and the 47 golds that went to Japan. All told, 14 world records were set during the Games, which brought together more than 9,500 athletes from 45 countries. More than 40 Asian records also fell.
“These numbers show the development of sports in the region,” Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) president Ahmad al-Fahad Al Sabah said. “Everybody was satisfied with the success and the level of the Games.”
Photo: AFP
China proved to be well ahead of the rest of the region in the pool, on the track and in an unmatchable variety of the other sports that are included in the Games, which feature everything from standard Olympic events to regional specialties like kabbadi — a rough, tag-like game that is popular on the subcontinent — to Southeast Asian favorite sepak takraw, an acrobatic game that resembles volleyball, but is played primarily with the feet.
North Korea turned out to be a major presence — its athletes won a modest 11 gold medals, but set five of the nine weightlifting world records.
After months of bumpy negotiations with Seoul, it sent a delegation of 150 athletes and, in a surprise move, two of its top leaders arrived in Incheon yesterday to attend the closing ceremony. After each medal, its athletes sang the praises of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has been absent from the public eye lately, generating rumors in the foreign media that he is ill or that something more mysterious is going on its esoteric inner circle.
Photo: Reuters
The highlight of the Games for North Korea was the women’s soccer final against Japan, which North Korea won convincingly 3-1.
State media reported the nation was “seized with ecstasy” by the victory and quoted farmers, students, coal miners and factory workers saying how they were inspired to work harder for the glory of their country after seeing the match.
The Games’ most dramatic moment was the South Korean men’s win in the soccer final against North Korea.
Photo: AFP
Playing under tight security before a fired-up crowd of 47,000 in one of the few events that actually drew a capacity crowd during the Games, the South Koreans scored in the 29th minute of extra-time after a hard-fought, but scoreless match.
The Games were not, of course, without controversy.
Along with the perennial disputes over scoring in boxing, which brought complaints from five countries, Qatar’s women’s basketball team pulled out of the competition without playing a single game because of a rule banning them from wearing their traditional headscarves, or hijabs, on the court.
The team said the rule, which is not observed in most other sports, was discriminatory.
“I am upset about the hijab,” Al Sabah said. “There is no reason to reject the hijab, not only for basketball, but for any sport.”
However, he added that he believes basketball’s international governing association will rethink its rules in the future, and the experience in Incheon may push that process along.
Officials said a milestone of the Games was its doping tests — more were conducted at Incheon than ever before.
As of yesterday afternoon, six doping cases had been announced, including a gold-winning hammer thrower from China and a gold medalist in wushu, a Chinese martial art, from Malaysia.
However, officials said the other athletes — including a soft tennis player from Cambodia and a soccer player from Tajikistan — were likely to have ingested banned stimulants without knowing or deliberately intending to cheat.
Organizers and OCA officials acknowledged the cost of hosting the Asian Games continues to be a problem.
Incheon’s organizing committee had to work on a reduced budget and touted the event as a model for cheaper, more streamlined Asian Games in the future. Even so, the Incheon games and related infrastructure projects reportedly cost about US$2 billion.
Saying it simply cannot afford such a burden, Vietnam announced it had relinquished its right to hold the next Games.
Jakarta will instead be the host in 2018.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier